we remain
by lavender macarons
Summary: Suddenly she can see, and there is a blinding white flashing in the distance. She stretches an arm out to touch it, and seconds later she is running towards it and diving into it and it feels like home. [In-universe, an exploration of the children of the barricade]
1. éponine

The light is warm.

* * *

Eponine doesn't die instantly.

She lies on the cobblestone pavement for hours that night, flitting in and out of consciousness, but doesn't have the strength or will to let anyone know she's still alive. Everyone is too much in shock to realize there is still a light pulse running through her body and small breaths - _inhale_, exhale, _inhale_... exhale - leaving her mouth in uneven intervals.

Through barely open eyes she sees Marius take anguished glances in her direction. His boyish smiles are lost in the realization that he might not live, and that she was gone. He only looks at her from a distance, and she was fine with that.

She can feel the leader of the group - _Enjolras, was it?_ - put his hand on her cold, clammy forehead and hears him whisper his disbelief - _this isn't how it was supposed to go, not so soon, not so grave_ - and then his thanks - _you were in need of this rebellion perhaps the most, dear gamine, but you were the first to go. your courage will be held in our highest regard_.

She hears Gavroche's familiar footsteps approach when the night is quiet and light snores are filling the air. She hears him cry - and curse her, and curse their lives - and then feels him press his face against her injured arm, tears freely falling onto the bloody fabric.

When the familiar breeze of the early morning hits her skin, she sees nothing, she feels nothing - the pitch black view of her eyelids vanish, the stiff ground behind her back disappears, the coppery tang of her own blood is no longer in her mouth - and it is the most terrifying moment of her life.

Until it isn't.

Suddenly she can see, and there is a blinding white flashing in the distance. She stretches an arm out to touch it, and seconds later she is running towards it and diving into it and it feels like home, like her mother's embrace when she was a child, so she closes her eyes and remembers when they were okay, and she was okay.

When she opens her eyes again, she finds that she is crying and that she is actually embracing - someone who looks a lot like Cosette. She pushes the woman off her, but the woman just smiles and offers her hand, but she just looks down. She looks down and can't believe what she sees because she is wearing a dress again, one that is soft and isn't too short or too tight. There is no more blood caking her arms and her hair is silky and shining. She is no longer missing the molars in the back of her mouth and the eternal emptiness that used to fill her stomach is gone.

And then she smiles, and it doesn't feel foreign or disgusting or out of place, and takes the woman's hand.

* * *

a/n: I've been listening to _Kingdom Come _by The Civil Wars, from the Hunger Games soundtrack, a lot recently, and it's so annoying because I can't get Les Mis out of my head when I hear it. So here is the result, haha. There will be more chapters, with other characters. I hope to finish this whole thing within this weekend, or this week tops.


	2. jean prouvaire

Jean Prouvaire knows that he is done for the second the National Guard manages to pull him to their side of the barricade.

It is surreal, minutes before, he was banging on the doors of the inhabitants of the neighborhood - who once cheered on their cause, but now even shut their blinds - and suddenly he feels a gun against his head and a calloused hand tug at his wrist. Then there are three of them, the National Guard, that are maneuvering him over the barricade.

While the three men begin to tie him to a post, he sees Enjolras climb to the top of the structure - and notes how, through tired and bloodied eyes, the barricade looks like a mountain and Enjolras looks like an ethereal being that the world just isn't ready to handle - and gives him a small smile. Feuilly appears next to Enjolras, and they are ready to scale down the barricade to rescue him, but he shakes his head. They are conflicted, and Feuilly is in tears, but they quickly return to their temporary safe haven.

Jehan finds it fitting that the street is abnormally quiet while he is facing death. It reminds him of the silence of the church whenever he would come by to think, or the stillness of the gardens behind his house where he would sit with his parents and his mother would read him poetry. It was the tranquility he always craved in the Musain when he was writing prose and never got. But it was there for him now.

As the Army General approaches him, he closes his eyes and embraces his last moments - he can feel his copy of the Theban Plays by Sophocles digging into his thigh, his cravat was coming loose and slightly moving from the center, the coin that he kept for luck in his left shoe migrated from his heel to under his toes - and then looks straight at the man that was going to take his life away - it is hard to hate the man that is going to kill you when he is apologizing as he is pulling the trigger, even though it is his duty.

It is uncomfortable for him, the short time that his vision is devoid of color. Usually, in a panic moment like this, he would pull out his pen and write and write and write and escape, but that wasn't an option. He drowns in thoughts, realizing that the gamine he gave five francs to every time in the market might not have a source of income anymore, his landlady would be alone now in the apartment building, and - even more morbid than the first two - all of the Les Amis, aside from Feuilly, would be the first to die in their families.

Before he can fret on that any longer, orange expands into his eyesight. It is glowing and calling for him, and he goes toward it because it is inviting, like the words in a book coming to life and engulfing him into their worlds.

He spins around and around and skips and jumps, and when he turns and finds the grin of the young gamine that was the first to die at the battle, he doesn't hesitate to follow her with a smile of his own.

* * *

a/n: I think that Jean Prouvaire would be more accepting of death and the afterlife than Eponine. He would just welcome it with open arms, especially since, circumstantially, his death wasn't that much of a surprise or spur of the moment.


End file.
